Malicious Office (OLE) / .XLS — malware analysis report

Static analysis result for SHA-256 9095ad72692c107f…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

1.27 MB Created: 2006-09-16 00:00:00 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2023-08-17
MD5: c77a247fce1940ec278c9650273ce4a9 SHA-1: ad280e0d79205e0245a996123704c53a8ea12dfa SHA-256: 9095ad72692c107f97a83f8da8a83e11a9668e397cd0df13468f6d12a69b313d
392 Risk Score

Malware Insights

MITRE ATT&CK
T1204 Malicious Link T1204.001 Malicious Link: Malicious Link T1566 Phishing T1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

The XLS file contains an embedded Equation Editor object exploiting CVE-2017-11882, which is a known vulnerability for delivering malicious payloads. This object contains a secondary PDF payload that includes a direct link to an executable or archive. The ClamAV detection 'Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0' further confirms its downloader capabilities. The VBA macros are present but contain no executable statements, indicating the primary malicious functionality resides within the OLE object and the embedded PDF.

Heuristics 10

  • Equation Editor Ole10Native payload — CVE-2017-11882 critical CVE likely CVE_2017_11882_EQUATION_OLE10NATIVE
    An embedded Microsoft Equation 3.0 object (CLSID 0002CE02-0000-0000-C000-000000000046) carries an Ole10Native packager stream instead of the normal Equation Native/MTEF data. This is the weaponized Equation Editor RCE delivery shape used by CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 maldocs. The payload (font-record overflow + shellcode) is frequently encrypted and the stream name case-scrambled to evade scanners, but an Equation object holding an Ole10Native stream has no benign use.
  • Equation Editor OLE object high CVE related OLE_EQUATION_EDITOR
    Contains Equation Editor object — related to CVE-2017-11882 / CVE-2018-0802 exploitation, but CLSID presence alone is not the malformed MTEF exploit primitive.
  • Secondary embedded PDF body has suspicious static findings critical POLYGLOT_CHILD_PDF_STATIC_TRIAGE
    A valid PDF body was found at a nonzero offset inside another container and its carved contents matched PDF exploit or lure heuristics. This catches polyglots where the top-level magic routes to ZIP/OLE while a PDF reader or downstream parser opens the hidden PDF payload.
  • PDF link points directly to executable/archive payload critical PDF_DIRECT_PAYLOAD_LINK
    PDF contains a clickable HTTP(S) URI whose path ends in an executable, script, shortcut, disk image, or archive extension. Documents can legitimately link to installers, so this is a high-risk delivery indicator rather than a standalone exploit fingerprint.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
  • ClamAV detection on extracted artifact critical EXTRACTED_FILE_CLAMAV
    ClamAV flagged at least one file extracted from inside this sample. Even when the wrapping document carries no AV detection of its own, a hit on the carved artifact is a strong indicator the sample is a delivery vehicle.
  • Clickable PDF combines external action with parser-evasion structure high PDF_ACTION_PARSER_EVASION
    PDF has an external clickable URI together with object graph or xref structures that make parsers disagree, such as divergent duplicate objects, parser divergence, or xref offset mismatch. That combination is stronger than a plain link: the document is both an outward-action carrier and a parser-confusion/evasion sample.
  • VBA project contains no executable statements low OLE_VBA_MACROS
    Document contains a VBA project, but extracted modules only contain attributes/options/comments and no executable statements.
  • Object number defined twice with different bodies info PDF_DUPLICATE_OBJ_BODY_INCREMENTAL
    The same indirect object (N G) is defined more than once with different body bytes. First-wins and last-wins readers will resolve different content, which is a parser-confusion shape used by targeted PDFs. Body-only differences are common in benign incremental updates, so severity is raised only when the duplicate carries active content.
  • Embedded URL info EMBEDDED_URL
    One or more URLs were extracted from the document. The URL itself is not a detection — see the per-URL labels for which channel (macro, JS, link annotation, document body, ...) reached each URL.
    URL https://https://www.google.co.in/example.com
    • http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/
    • http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/mm/
    • http://ns.adobe.com/pdf/1.3/

Extracted artifacts 8

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
macros.bas
7f506327609c082af1cd37dde23bc2c71a000f7d1ef530b6abb66775040a7673
vba-macro oletools.olevba.extract_macros (decoded VBA source) 1206 bytes
ole10native_00.bin
debfc8f92e210af566e5a87154a4f9fcd943f6738b96cd8b4f15145389771bba
ole-package OLE Ole10Native stream: MBD001AE45E/olE10nAtiVE 1894 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00076c00.pdf
bba314ad763ba6823d5ecaed17fb83a4ddd0bab480789fb485d87bd55a95880e
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x76C00 843776 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely
font_00_sfnt_off0000817d.bin
68d167e68895a344f3603a4efd0d8438eb8fdebe759cee48f2b4adf75c76c961
pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x817D 12100 bytes
font_01_sfnt_off00009f95.bin
50551000b9f90b3f445ee94749557d9ddf96697a74984b3ccf3d2bae66910750
pdf-font-stream PDF embedded font (sfnt) at offset 0x9F95 15820 bytes
polyglot_child_pdf_off00001000.pdf
0d4b9628373b9dfa8c254f98549430a0df4df74e78379a79e6f6688602f790f5
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x1000 1326080 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely
polyglot_child_pdf_off00006200.pdf
59200799b4d3c6288a2df30c40490542fa9b3dacd892fb47a0a17a226ad5316c
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0x6200 1305088 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely
polyglot_child_pdf_off0000e600.pdf
c08868e72ee9c5359b3d4b1e2bc17d6bbe843b8ecd5ef6902dd5095d80b060eb
polyglot-child-pdf Secondary PDF body inside ole container at offset 0xE600 1271296 bytes
Detection
ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.94c25b356b5a6cac-9978798-0
Obfuscation or payload: unlikely